Science.gov has an updated look this week to make room for enhancements. The enhancements will both faciliate use and awareness of Science.gov and highlight findings and activities of the participating agencies.

Want to share or save a permanent link on Science.gov via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook? There is now a sharing and bookmarking toolbar on the main Science.gov page as well as on each subject page .

As with most things, all federated search products are not created equally. Recently, I ran across a situation where federated search was derided for lack of capability related to precision search and relevancy ranking. As is often the case, this derision is founded in a narrow view of federated search. The view that federated search is only capable of generically searching data stores or not providing relevance across the resources being searched is this narrow view of what the technology can achieve.

Long-term investments in basic research produce the major conceptual breakthroughs necessary for creating radically new technologies. To be sure, scientists cannot make specific promises about future advances, and there often are long delays in the applications that arise from basic research.

Information sharing is an integral part of the R&D process. Thus, decision makers affect the pace of scientific progress when they determine the fraction of R&D dollars dedicated to sharing knowledge. Think of it this way: A program for sharing knowledge derived from scientific research has much in common with a scientific research program itself in that they share the common goal of advancing science. When decision makers of R&D programs discuss optimum funding for research, their decisions are driven by affordability. Similarly, there is an optimum investment in sharing research results as conceptually suggested by the Knowledge Investment Curve. And just as for research itself, the optimum investment is not the minimum.

The OSTI Corollary – If the sharing of knowledge is accelerated, discovery is accelerated – explains why we at OSTI are constantly striving to share more science with more people faster and more conveniently than ever before.